Modern televised weather reports incorporate computer generated graphical information in combination with video segments and live presenters to provide weather reports which are both informative and entertaining. Such reports typically are prepared by a meteorologist or other technician based upon weather information provided from a variety of weather information sources. Computer based production equipment is employed for generating graphical displays of weather information and for combining the graphical displays with video segments to provide the entire weather report presentation.
Computer-based systems, including detailed computerized geographic maps, and other graphics generating capabilities, may be employed to combine the information provided from various weather information sources and forecast models into an integrated weather report. Computer-generated graphics often are combined with live presenters and/or live or recorded video segments to provide a complete weather presentation to a viewer as part of a televised weather report. For example, such a presentation may include live video of current weather conditions or recorded video segments of weather conditions occurring during the day for which the weather report is provided.
Video segments of past and current weather conditions employed as part of a televised weather presentation may include time-lapsed photography video presentations. For example, a video camera may be positioned to take a video image of the sky conditions evolving throughout a day or other time period of interest (e.g., taken near a landmark which would be recognized by viewers of the weather presentation). The video camera may be computer controlled to take frames of video images at spaced apart time intervals throughout the time period of interest. When the time-lapsed video created in this manner is played back at normal speed, a sped-up video image of the evolving sky conditions is presented. Using time-lapsed photography in this manner, a televised weather report may present a dramatic video summary of evolving sky conditions throughout an entire day with a video segment running only a few seconds.
Forecasts of future weather conditions for a location typically are provided as part of a weather presentation using a relatively simple graphical and textual presentation format. For example, future weather conditions are often presented using a simple graphical presentation format showing a time-line of future time periods with high and/or low temperatures and a graphical indication of general sky conditions for those time periods indicated thereon. Such a presentation may include a computer generated graphic illustration of a sun, if the forecast sky conditions are sunny, clouds, if the forecast sky conditions are cloudy, rain and lightening, if thunderstorms are predicted, etc. Such sky condition graphics and forecast high/low temperatures may be overlaid on a map display, thereby allowing forecast sky conditions and temperatures for a given time period to be presented simultaneously for various locations throughout a region.
Although such relatively simple presentations of future forecast weather conditions are typically clear, accurate, and easily understandable, such simple presentations are not very dramatic or memorable. What is desired, therefore, is a system and method for generating a presentation of future forecast weather conditions which conveys more dramatically to viewers thereof the weather conditions they are likely to experience in the future. Such a system and method should be easily employed by meteorologists or other technicians to generate quickly dramatic forecast weather presentations based on available weather forecast data.
A fractal is a geometrically complex object, the complexity of which arises through the repetition of form over some range of scale. Fractal complexity is the repetition of the same thing over and over again, at different scales, as opposed to non-fractal complexity, which is the accumulation of a variety of distinct and unrelated events over time. For example, trees describe an approximate fractal pattern, as the trunk divides into branches that further subdivide into smaller branches that ultimately subdivide into twigs; at each stage of the division the pattern is a smaller version of the original. Fractals are relevant to any system involving self-similarity repeated on diminishing scales
Fractals are used in computer graphics generation. For example fractal techniques have been used to render computer generated graphical images of naturally occurring objects or structures which follow a fractal pattern. In such fractal based computer graphics generation techniques there typically is a basic computer implemented graphics generating operation that is performed, and basically the same operation is performed over and over again, at smaller and smaller scales. At the completion of the computer graphics generation process, you end up with something that looks like a complex structure that one might observe in nature. Furthermore, the resulting image can have infinite detail, because as one zooms in, you can just keep on doing the repetitious fractal operation over and over again to achieve the desired detail. Thus, a computer generated fractal object appears complex, and infinitely detailed. But the operation to create such an object is a simply a repetition of the same basic operation. You stop when you have enough detail. And for computer graphics, the size of the pixels impose an ultimate limit on the operation.
Fractal techniques have been used to generate computer generated graphical cloud images. True volumetric fractal cloud images have been known for a number of years. These known fractal cloud images, and the techniques for generating them, are very complex. Such known fractal cloud images have been “slowly” rendered only on very expensive Silicon Graphics super computers running UNIX operating systems.
What is desired, therefore, is a system and method which enables fractal cloud images to be displayed in real-time on any modest personal computer using a standard operating system.